It’s no secret that we’re huge Pavement fans here at The End of All Music. We’ve probably played Pavement records in the shop more than any other band. We are crazy excited about the band’s upcoming reunion shows…see ya in Atlanta!
Pavement’s debut album, Slanted & Enchanted, turned 30 years old recently and Matador Records is repressing the album on limited, red splatter vinyl.
ROTM Club members will be getting a copy of the limited LP. Sign up asap to get a copy!
While it’s still hot as heck outside here in Mississippi, summer is coming to an end, so why not jam the opening track from Slanted & Enchanted, “Summer Babe,” all through August.
Some listeners may initially find the lo-fi sound of the record inaccessible, but the sheer strength of Pavement’s songs settles in after a few plays. So keep spinning ’til you’re singing along! We promise! From the bumpy dream-pop of album opener Summer Babe (Winter Version), through to the rueful tone poem standout Here (one of Malkmus’ finest lyrics) and on via countless other tracks where a chorus or hook of heart-stopping plaintiveness bursts from the morass of scratchy riffs and wonky drums to casually harpoon your heart, Slanted and Enchanted is a consistently lovely, fresh-sounding record. In many ways its sonic roughness has preserved it from time: production values are never going to date on a record that had no production values in the first place, and the layers of discordant sound serve give it a certain mystique, with every snatch of melody and earworm chorus remaining delightfully unexpected. Rarely has such winsome music been forged from such rough materials. (We see you GBV!)
Pavement founders Stephen Malkmus and Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg are also guests on the latest episode of Matador’s Revisionist History podcast where they talk with Matt Sweeney about 30 years of Slanted and Enchanted, the new Terror Twilight deluxe edition (discounted now in our online shop), Pavement’s upcoming reunion tour, and more.
